Kids Eat Free On Your Schedule With The #BPKidsCard

We tried to make the drive from Calgary to Vancouver straight through with our kids once. It’s a 10 hour drive between our new and old homes, and while it’s a long day for adults, it’s doable. With kids? Well, like I said, we’ve tried it once and have never done it since.

Now, the drive is broken up somewhere between the Shuswap and Okanagan. The two five hour drives mean we can take more breaks along the way turning the road trip into an adventure instead of an ordeal.

We can visit lakes, walk through abandoned railway tunnels, catch Pokemon at historic sites, and just turn a long drive into a fun day trip.

After a week in Vancouver, however, I was eager to get home. I wanted to go straight to Salmon Arm, but the boys were hungry and I knew just the place to quickly calm my troops before heading back out on the road.

The Boston Pizza in Merritt is a favorite for us. It’s half way from half way. By staying in Vancouver until early afternoon, I knew we would hit the Nicola Valley in time for dinner before crashing in our Sicamous hotel for bed.

It’s filled with activities and games. They offer pizza, pasta, burgers, (the three main food groups my kids always seek out on menus), and they offer fresh cut veggies.

That last item is a big one for me. My friends marvel that my kids will eat vegetables, but they do. They love red peppers, cucumbers, and sometimes carrots. A burger with veggies for Charlie, a pizza with veggies for Z, and the smiles abounded while we took 45 minutes off the road, coloured, quizzed, and noshed.

My boys filled, we hit the road and pressed on through the dusk to crash on our beds before finishing the trip the next day.

I’ve done it straight, just stopping for gas, but now I look forward to the breaks along the way. I seek out a lake never seen, a scenic route not taken, a Boston Pizza where everyone can have what they want, and we can get back on the road quickly.

Looking for a way to celebrate back to school or take a gorgeous weekend road trip as summer wanes and fall wakes? Take along a Boston Pizza Kids Card and have a “kids eat free night” on your schedule.

For a minimum $5 donation, theBoston Pizza Kids Cards are available in store and at BostonPizza.com until October 2, 2016 and can be redeemed until June 30, 2017. On their own they’re good for 5 free kid meals (a $35 value!) but, as an extra bonus, if you register your Kids Card on your MyBP account you will receive a sixth free kids meal! Each Boston Pizza Kids Card gets you free road trip meals and helps great charities like the JDRF.

Through donations from the Boston Pizza Foundation Future Prospects, the JDRF funded a youth ambassador program which provides mentorship to young people living with type 1 diabetes. That simple $5 donation = 1 hour with a role model for a kid in need. You know I’m down with that kind of support to T1D kids.

Other charities benefiting from the $890 000 raised through the Boston Pizza Kids Cardscampaign last year were Big Brothers Big Sisters, Kids Help Phone, Live Different, and the Rick Hansen Foundation. More than $22M in donation has been raised to date and, each year, Boston Pizza Foundation Future Prospects provides more than 200 000 hours of guidance and inspiration for kids.